Goldman Sachs prime-brokerage data, reported by Reuters on October 2, put average systematic equity long/short returns at +3.46%, their best month of 2026, against −0.55% for fundamental equity long/short. The MSCI World index fell 1.3%. The fundamental group therefore lost money while beating that equity benchmark; the systematic cohort delivered a much larger positive result.
Rates and commodities supplied another route: the Société Générale trend index gained more than 4%, with Winton attributing much of the gain to short fixed-income and long energy positions. Those exposures explain the trend result more specifically than the label “quant.” They do not establish why Quantedge or Citadel made money, or how any individual equity model behaved. Reuters report and strategy detail.